Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Pearl Tull is nearing the end of her life but not of her memory. It was a Sunday night in 1944 when her husband left the little row house on Baltimore’s Calvert Street, abandoning Pearl to raise their three children alone....

Breathing Lessons

Maggie and Ira Moran have been married for 28 years...and it shows: in their quarrels, in their routines, in their ability to tolerate with affection each other's eccentricities. Maggie, a kooky, lovable meddler and an irrepressible optimist, wants nothing more than to fix her son's broken marriage. Ira is infuriatingly practical, a man "who should have married Ann Landers".

Saint Maybe

In 1965, the happy Bedloe family is living an ideal, apple-pie existence in Baltimore. Then, in the blink of an eye, a single tragic event occurs that will transform their lives forever--particularly that of 17-year-old Ian Bedloe, the youngest son, who blames himself for the sudden "accidental" death of his older brother. Depressed and depleted, Ian is almost crushed under the weight of an unbearable, secret guilt.Then one crisp January evening, he catches sight of a window with glowing yellow neon, the Church of the Second Chance.

Back When We Were Grownups

"Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered that she had turned into the wrong person." So Anne Tyler opens this irresistible new novel. The woman is Rebecca Davitch, a fifty-three-year-old grandmother. Is she an impostor in her own life? she asks herself. Is it indeed her own life? Or is it someone else’s? As always with Anne Tyler’s novels, once we enter her world it is hard to leave.

Ladder of Years

"Baltimore woman disappears during family vacation" declares the headline. Forty-year-old Delia Grinstead is last seen strolling down the Delaware shore, wearing nothing more than a bathing suit and carrying a beach tote with five hundred dollars tucked inside. To her husband and three almost-grown children, she has vanished without trace or reason. But for Delia, "walking away from it all" is not a premeditated act, but an impulse that will lead her into a new, exciting, and unimagined life.

A Spool of Blue Thread: A Novel

"It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon..." This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture.

The Gap of Time: The Winter's Tale Retold (Hogarth Shakespeare)

"I saw the strangest sight tonight." New Bohemia. America. A storm. A black man finds a white baby abandoned in the night. He gathers her up - light as a star - and decides to take her home. London. England. After the financial crash. Leo Kaiser knows how to make money, but he doesn't know how to manage the jealousy he feels towards his best friend and his wife. Is his newborn baby even his?

Digging to America: A Novel

Two families, who would otherwise never have come together, meet by chance at the Baltimore airport: the Donaldsons, a very American couple, and the Yazdans, Maryam's fully assimilated son and his attractive Iranian wife. Each couple is awaiting the arrival of an adopted infant daughter from Korea. After the instant babies from distant Asia are delivered, Bitsy Donaldson impulsively invites the Yazdans to celebrate.

The Imperfectionists

Set against the gorgeous backdrop of Rome, Tom Rachman’s wry, vibrant debut follows the topsy-turvy private lives of the reporters, editors, and executives of an international English-language newspaper as they struggle to keep it - and themselves - afloat. This hilarious and poignant look at the struggles of print news will establish Rachman as one of the 21st century’s most perceptive talents.

Masked Ball at Broxley Manor: A Royal Spyness Novella

At the end of her first unsuccessful season out in society, Lady Georgiana has all but given up on attracting a suitable man - until she receives an invitation to a masked Halloween ball at Broxley Manor. Georgie is uncertain why she was invited, until she learns that the royal family intends to marry her off to a foreign prince, one reputed to be mad.

The Great Santini

Step into the powerhouse life of Bull Meecham. He's all Marine -- fighter pilot, king of the clouds, and absolute ruler of his family. Lillian is his wife -- beautiful, southern-bred, with a core of velvet steel. Without her cool head, her kids would be in real trouble. Ben is the oldest, a born athlete whose best never satisfies the big man. Ben's got to stand up, even fight back, against a father who doesn't give in -- not to his men, not to his wife, and certainly not to his son.

A Man Called Ove

Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon - the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him "the bitter neighbor from hell". But behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine: A Novel

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office.

Foreign Affairs

Virginia Miner, a 50-something, unmarried tenured professor, is in London to work on her new book about children's folk rhymes. Despite carrying a U.S. passport, Vinnie feels essentially English and rather looks down on her fellow Americans. But in spite of that, she is drawn into a mortifying and oddly satisfying affair with an Oklahoman tourist who dresses more Bronco Billy than Beau Brummel.

Bastard Out of Carolina

Greenville County, South Carolina, is a wild, lush place that is home to the Boatwright family - a tight-knit clan of rough-hewn, hard- drinking men who shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who get married young and age too quickly. At the heart of this story is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a bastard child who observes the world around her with a mercilessly keen perspective.

Celestial Navigation

The Pultizer Prize-winning author of Saint Maybe and Breathing Lessons offers the beloved story of a man whose contented life in his rundown house in Baltimore is shaken to its core, after his sister moves in with him and his boarder starts bringing home babies.

Is This Tomorrow

It’s 1956, and working-mother Ava Lark and her son, Lewis, have rented a house in a less-than-welcoming Boston suburb. There, Lewis finds he is only able to befriend the other fatherless kids on the block, Jimmy and Rose. But when Jimmy goes missing, neighborhood paranoia ramps to new heights, further ostracizing Ava and Lewis.

Morgan's Passing

Morgan Gower works at Cullen's hardware store in north Baltimore. He has seven daughters and a warmhearted wife, but as he journeys into the gray area of middle age, he finds his household growing tedious. Then Morgan meets two lovely young newlyweds under some rather extreme circumstances - and all three discover that no one's heart is safe.

The Amateur Marriage: A Novel

They seemed like the perfect couple: young, good-looking, made for each other. The moment Pauline, a stranger to the Polish Eastern Avenue neighborhood of Baltimore (though she lived only twenty minutes away), walked into his mother's grocery store, Michael was smitten. And in the heat of World War II fervor, they are propelled into a hasty wedding. But they never should have married.

A Widow for One Year

Ruth Cole is a complex, often self-contradictory character — a "difficult" woman. Her story is told in three parts, each focusing on a crucial time in her life. When we first meet her, Ruth is only four. The second window into Ruth's life opens when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as successful as her literary career. The novel closes in the autumn of 1995, when Ruth is a 41-year-old widow and mother — and about to fall in love for the first time.

The Nix: A Novel

It's 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson - college professor, stalled writer - has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasn't seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she's reappeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the Internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high school sweetheart.

Thought I Knew You

Claire Barnes is shattered when her husband, Greg, goes on a business trip and never returns. Unwilling to just wait for the police to find him, Claire conducts her own investigation. Her best friend Drew helps her look for answers, but all she finds are troubling questions. With every clue, she discovers that Greg may not be the man she thought she married.

Earthly Possessions

Charlotte Emory has always lived a quiet, conventional life in Clarion, Maryland. She lives as simply as possible, and one day decides to simplify everything and leave her husband. Her last trip to the bank throws Charlotte's life into an entirely different direction when a restless young man in a nylon jacket takes her hostage during the robbery--and soon the two are heading south into an unknown future, and a most unexpected fate.

Illumination Night

Illumination Night follows the lives of a young blond giant who is as beautiful as he is frightening; an old woman at the end of her life whose last mission is to save her granddaughter's soul; a family torn apart by a wife's fears and a husband's unrealized desires; and the high school girl who comes to Martha's Vineyard against her will, who steals husbands and cars, and who will bring everyone together in a web of yearning, sin, and ultimate redemption.

Publisher's Summary

Meet Macon Leary - a travel writer who hates both travel and strangeness. Grounded by loneliness, comfort, and a somewhat odd domestic life, Macon is about to embark on a surprising new adventure, arriving in the form of a fuzzy-haired dog obedience trainer who promises to turn his life around.

What the Critics Say

"Not a character, including Macon's dog Edward, is untouched by delightful eccentricity in this charming story, full of surprises and wisdom. All of Tyler's novels are wonderful; this is her best yet." (Libarary Journal)

I'm trying to figure out what it is. I mean, I loved the book, liked the movie. The audiobook? Where the hell did the charm go? I'm thinking the narration is at fault. Don't get me wrong. Being an Audible Addict, I have plenty of Joe Barrett, and he's brilliant in "Defiant" and "Roberts Ridge." He has the right stuff. But here, he turns a backwards, inside-out, unhappy man into a snappish man with a stick up his wazoo who has to have everything his way (rather than feeling that it would just be safer if things were done such and such way). And he makes people feel stupid. I just couldn't feel for him. Listening to the book, even when Macon's grandfather is discussed in explanation, isn't enough to up the care factor. His presentation throughout the book is exasperating, the love story isn't credible as delivered, and I'm feeling really, really disheartened right about now. Truly, I loved the book, like I said, was even fond of the movie. But I just can't give a rat's patoot about Macon here, and he's what the whole thing hinges on.If you loved the book/movie, listen carefully to the sample. There's a bit of his coldness in there. I mean, can't he show Sarah some warmth, consideration? I don't hear any sort of this-is-just-the-way-I-think; I just hear hear a cold, self-absorbed man.

I had read this novel many years ago and loved it. It had been my first Anne Tyler novel. Listening to this now, I was disappointed throughout the first half. The characters were quirky, almost typical Anne Tyler characters, but the freshness of the experience was gone for me. This is the story of Macon, an odd, finicky man dealing with the demise of his marriage after the tragic death of his son. When Macon meets Muriel, an unlikely mate, his life begins to change in big ways. Halfway through the novel, the characters became alive to me, and I loved the second half of the book. It was hard to rate this, as the first half is a basic 3 star novel, but the second half was a 5 star story which kept me glued to my iPod. This does not feel dated, and I recommend it to anyone who likes Anne Tyler or quirky middle-aged romances.

Where does The Accidental Tourist rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

in the middle

What did you like best about this story?

the characters and how they change

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

The main character is named Macon. The reader constantly pronounces it Mee con or meegun. it sounds as if he is saying megan. I find it really annoying.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

This is a great book. I read it years ago and later saw the movie version. it is funny and charming and the characters are rounded out and believable. I am not enjoying the audible version as much as I had hoped.

Maybe Ann Tyler, but I will try and avoid Joe Barrett. I am sure he is a decent narrator but not for this material especially the Muriel character. Kinda annoying.

What did you like best about this story?

The complex characters.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Joe Barrett?

Not sure as this is my first audiobook

Do you think The Accidental Tourist needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

Sure! How about a follow up movie also.

Any additional comments?

While the book certainly expands on what was possible in a two hour movie, some of it seemed excessive and unnecessary. I especially disliked all the dream sequences. I know they were they to help explain some of the inner working of Macon's mind however, I found them distracting and not needed. Sometimes while listening to this in my car on the way home, I found my mind wandering and having to rewind the book several cycles. Was it because the book/story was uninteresting or was it because this is my first audiobook and I needed to train my mind to listen? I really think I enjoyed the movie better. Here's hoping that my next audiobook is better.

Would you be willing to try another one of Joe Barrett’s performances?

No! He made the main female character, Muriel, sound like Jerry Lewis in one of his comedies. I can't imagine any man finding this woman alluring with the interpretation he gives her. Geena Davis did a far better performance in the film.

Any additional comments?

It's interesting that Muriel was portrayed much more sympathetically in the film and Kathleen Turner came off badly. In the book she's a bit more likable, and the book also fleshes out a lot of Macon's feelings (such as they are.) I would recommend the film over a reading of the novel, however. It's still a fine story with amusing characters.

At first it was kind of hard to continue to listen to this man's OCD ways but they became increasingly funny and familiar little bit of an experience with the person in my own life I really enjoyed this book!

The best literary novels are character-driven rather than plot-driven, and that is certainly the case with Macon Leary, who writes guidebooks for people who don't like to travel under the pseudonym The Accidental Tourist. We enter his life just as his marriage falls apart after the tragic death of his son. But the more we learn about Macon, the more we learn that he was damaged from the start, as is his whole phobic family.

The best novels utilize literary devices to develop character. Tyler employs two symbolic parallels to describe the arc of Macon's character development as he begins to recognize and deal with his flaws. One is his job as travel writer, a potent and humorous symbol of a person who cannot deal with the unpredictability of life, who foregoes potential pleasures by going to extraordinary lengths to mitigate all risk.

The other symbol is even more pertinent and entertaining -- Macon hires Muriel to train his recalcitrant dog, who we are told more than once is acting out of fear of abandonment, just as Macon feels abandoned. The entertaining part is the dog trainer, Muriel (Geena Davis won an Oscar for this role). She is the polar opposite of Macon, someone who has not had an easy road through life but revels in it unabashedly.

The only problem is that this most entertaining aspect of the book is ruined by the narrator. The rest of his reading is OK, but the voice he uses for Muriel is just horrible, both in tone (whiny and strident) and in characterization (making her seem crass and juvenile). So a five star classic becomes a four star listen -- still worthwhile if you can get past Muriel's voice.